


The Holy Or The Broken

by Theyna_Shipper



Series: Gift fics [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Can't Spell Himbo Without Han, Fluff, Gift Fic, HEA, Han Solo Having Gay Thoughts, Han Solo POV, M/M, Pining, Swearing, Transgender Han Solo, Transgender Luke Skywalker, Useless Gay, birthday fic, open-ended, transgender character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 16:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30125925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theyna_Shipper/pseuds/Theyna_Shipper
Summary: Luke.Luke is… he can’t exactly be described in words that Han knows. He is a lot, yet at the same time very simple. It’s an unusual combination that makes him impossible to fully understand.But, Han can tell one thing:He needs a friend.
Relationships: Luke Skywalker/Han Solo
Series: Gift fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099928
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	The Holy Or The Broken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeduan_Dragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeduan_Dragon/gifts).



> Happy birthday! I won't say too much about it, except that I hope that you like it and I love you. 
> 
> For those of you not receiving this is a gift, here was the request I was given:  
> -Han and Luke are both trans and gay for each other  
> -No plot  
> -Just some fluff set between Episode 4 and 5
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Initially, Han doesn’t know why he stays with the rebels. 

Scratch that, he’ll never know why he stayed. 

Most people would think he stayed for Leia. He won’t correct most people. He couldn’t give them a better answer himself. 

Maybe the only reason he stays is because he _can._ It’s the first time he’s had a place where he was asked to stay, where he was _wanted._ As much as he acts like a loner, it’s a good feeling. 

So, for one reason or another he stays. Perhaps he isn’t the most liked person there but he isn’t the least liked, and he can live with it. 

He finds it rather nice, actually. 

And even if he wanted to, he couldn’t say it’s why he stayed, but after a little time spent with the rebels, there’s something, or rather someone, that he finds: 

Luke. 

Luke is… he can’t exactly be described in words that Han knows. He is a lot, yet at the same time very simple. It’s an unusual combination that makes him impossible to fully understand. 

But, Han can tell one thing: 

He needs a friend. 

Sure, he gets on alright with Leia, and he’s got his pilot friends on base, but there’s a distinct air of loneliness about him that no one else seems to pick up on. Some see him as the hero on a pedestal, or else the untouchable Jedi. Han just sees a scared kid who’s away from home for the first time and realizing the world is a lot crazier than he thought. 

He’s been there, too. He could’ve used someone looking out for him.

* * *

“Hey, kid, you know how to solder?” 

“‘Course I do,” Luke grunts. “Need some help?” 

“Need an extra pair of hands, and Chewie’s are too big to do a damned thing in here.” 

The wookie grumbles in reply, but returns to his work under the belly of the Falcon who, as usual, isn’t exactly functioning perfectly. Not that he would ever admit it. 

Luke hops onto the roof of the Falcon, and Han points to where he needs the help. “Just hold it steady, kid.” 

He holds the wires in place while Han solders them back together, and gives them a quick twang just to make sure they’ll hold. And the wires themselves _do_ hold, only for another component to snap out of place instead. 

Han swears, but Luke simply laughs. Luke smiles a lot, Han realizes. A sincere and innocent smile that seems almost out of place on a face that is tanned and lined with hard work and harsh sunlight, yet somehow suits him perfectly. 

“How do you even keep this ship in the air?” Luke asks, interrupting his runaway train of thought. “I mean, she’s not exactly…” 

“Watch, your mouth, kid, this ship has saved your ass more than once.” 

He’s very good at this whole ‘making friends’ things, isn’t he?

“Oh, it was the _ship,”_ Luke laughs, and Han doesn’t fully assess his meaning until he’s moved on too, “So, was there anything else you needed help with?” 

“Yeah, c’mere.” Any repair job on the Falcon involves at least more than one item; she either holds or she doesn’t and they’re currently in an instance of doesn’t. They spend about another hour fixing up the ship, too focused on the work to talk. 

Luke slides off the top of the ship once they're done, and clasps Han’s hand in a firm shake, and the formality almost makes him laugh. 

“Thanks, Han.” 

“No problem, kid. Take care of yourself.” 

_Take care of yourself?_ Chewie growls once Luke is gone. 

“Shut up,” he mumbles

* * *

Luke still continues with his Jedi training thing that Han doesn’t fully understand, even without that old desert man, and while he finds the laser-sword swinging interesting he can’t pretend this Force crap makes sense to him. 

But, that’s not his job, and he won’t trouble Luke about it. 

What he does do is occasionally run into him in the small spaces they use to train or exercise, usually one of them coming and the other going, maybe sharing a brief chat before moving on. 

It works for them. 

Well, it works fine until Han sees Luke practicing with his saber once, shirtless, and it’s not that shirtlessness that strikes him so much as two familiar dark scars under his pectorals, ones that Han not only recognizes but also mirrors. 

But then Luke looks over, and sees him staring, and turns away, embarrassed, and now Han feels like shit too, and plenty embarrassed himself, and leaves as quickly as he can. 

They tread awkwardly around each other for the rest of that day and the next, Luke waiting for Han to bring it up or not and Han generally feeling terrible. 

Finally, he gets the guts to talk to Luke about it, and finds him alone in one of the less used hallways. 

“Hannah,” he says abruptly. 

“What?” 

“Pretty fuckin’ stupid name, I always thought,” he continues. “Can’t say I know why my parents picked it, but I never did keep much of what they gave me…” he shrugs. 

Luke looks like he doesn’t know quite how to respond, and Han wouldn’t expect him to. 

“Look, kid, all I’m saying is… just, there’s now need to feel weird around me, okay?” _At least not for that reason._

Then Luke’s lips shape into that smile that is so confusing yet so compelling, and form the words, “Thanks, Han.” 

He claps Luke’s shoulder awkwardly. “No problem, kid.” 

“And… Han?” 

“Yeah?” 

“I don’t feel weird around you.” He pauses for a moment, and Han thinks he’s going to leave, but then he adds, “You’re great to be around, okay?”

* * *

Luke and Han perch on top of the Falcon, eating lunch, swinging their legs and laughing at some stupid joke. 

Apparently Han isn’t so horrible at being a friend as he thought. 

“Feels weird just sitting here,” Luke mumbles. 

“What?” 

“Just, staying parked here inside. When I joined, I guess I thought, I don’t know, I’d feel more… useful.” 

Han raises an eyebrow. He’s honestly felt more useful than he ever did before. He supposes that for someone like Luke, though, who’s always worked hard and been able to anticipate, if not see the payoff, this feels awfully slow-paced. “You’re helping plenty, kid.” 

He shrugs. “Starting to realize it’s not all just… glory and bad guys and shootouts I guess.” He chuckles. “War is a lot of… meetings. Way more meetings than I expected.” 

Han laughs. “That’s about it, isn’t it, kid?”

Except Luke’s grown up so much in the time they’ve been here. He’s matured and aged, in good ways and bad, in manners both innocent and harsh. He’s learned a lot about the world and how cruel it is. 

At least that’s Han’s perspective as an outsider. Sometimes he feels certain he will never know what’s going on in Luke’s head, as infinitely complex as it seems to be. 

Han, he’s learned plenty about the world– well, he did when he was young. If he had delusions of grandeur, or god forbid, _morality_ in life… well, that was long gone before he was too old. But now he feels like he’s just stuck living whatever ridiculous, mercenary existence it is he’s learned. 

He has learned to survive. 

It’s been a long time since he’s done much more. 

“You think a lot,” Luke says. 

“What?” 

His lips twitch distractingly. “You’re always just, going quiet and thinking about stuff.” 

Han looks back down on the floor. “Sorry.” 

“S’ okay,” Luke replies, sliding off the hood of the ship. “Maybe you can tell me what you’re thinking about sometime.”

 _You,_ Han wants to say. But he doesn’t. Instead, he just ruffles Luke’s sandy hair, and grins as he tosses the bangs out of his face.

Lord, he’s really in trouble now.

* * *

Has Han ever been in love? 

It’s likely. He had his share of awkward teenage years. And he’s put on the air of the scoundrel and the flirt, which has accidentally devolved into real feelings at some point. There was his famously ill-fated and intense infatuation with Lando Calrissian, though he’s not certain what to call that. 

In theory, Han is fairly certain he has been in love. In practice, he is not even certain what that would mean. 

But this, whatever he feels for Luke, is something different from all of that. He’d really like to put a word to it but this, like everything about Luke, seems to defy definition. 

Maybe, he thinks, it isn’t so bad to just let it exist by itself, when he’s not around Luke. Maybe it’s fine to just let life happen and not try to control. 

Maybe, he thinks when he _is_ around Luke, this is terrible and confusing and he can’t leave it alone. 

It’s the elephant in the room that only he can see.

* * *

Sometimes, often in fact, Luke and Han will slip onto the Falcon away from the bustle of the base, to escape and be alone and rest. 

Rest is elusive to both men. Such has been true for Han for several years, but Luke is new to this kind of disquiet. Once upon a time, he was able to sleep at night. 

Like he said, he’s aged in more ways than one. 

But, being able to lie down in the niches on the Falcon and voice whatever serious or silly thought comes into their heads helps. 

Luke leans his head against Han’s shoulder, and they trade stories or jokes or observations, or whatever else they feel like. He barely remembers half of what they say in any of their conversations. It’s not the words that matter so much as the time spent together. 

And this time, they stay in the Falcon far later than necessary, long past when the rest of the base has returned to their barracks or else gone on night watch. 

They stop talking after a while, only lying still in the semi-dark and thinking. 

Han _does_ think a lot. 

And somehow, that’s how they fall asleep that night, Luke leaning against Han and Han with his arm half-slung around the other. 

They’ve become accustomed to a sort of casual intimacy that neither asks nor answers, but is wanted and accepted nonetheless. 

Accustomed as he is to restless sleep, Han wakes up after two hours (and even this is a longer period than usual). Somehow, Luke has curled into his side and his sandy hair tangled with Han’s. 

_Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck._ He tries to move, but that jostles Luke’s head and that suddenly seems even worse, because then he’ll wake up. 

If Han were half the rugged and smooth scoundrel he pretends to be, he’d know what to do in this situation, but he is not, and he does not. 

He’s very pretty when he sleeps, his long, pale eyelashes glimmering in the half-light of the ship. His innocence, occasionally lost in his hardened expressions when he was awake, is preserved in his slumber, in the ghost of his breath on his cheeks.

Carefully, oh-so-carefully, Han tries to shimmy his shoulder out from under Luke’s head, and he is fairly confident he has succeeded, but just as he pulls away the last inch, Luke’s eyes delicately flutter open, like a butterfly’s wings. 

“Han,” he says abruptly. 

“Hey, kid,” he replies awkwardly. “We… I guess we fell asleep.” 

“Yeah,” Luke says, standing up quickly. “Yeah, I guess, I’d better get back to my bunk–see you tomorrow–”

Oh, not again. Han’s not sure he can do this again– Luke feeling too awkward to talk around him, him feeling the same– but surely this will only get worse and worse the longer he represses whatever… whatever _this_ is. 

He can’t go on much longer like this. 

But apparently, he will, because all he says is, “‘Night, kid.”

* * *

It is like a repeat of everything that happened last time: Luke avoiding him, both of them avoiding eye contact in the halls, all that wonderful awkwardness. 

This, Han thinks, cannot go on any longer. 

So, he musters up some of that fake charm, mixes it up with his actual feelings for some kind of ungodly cocktail, and finds Luke. 

“Han!” He drops the wrench he was holding. “I was just–”

“You’ve never been kissed before, have you, kid?” 

It is a bit of an out-of-the-blue way to start, but he’ll lose his confidence if he doesn’t.

“I… No,” Luke admits, face flushed, eyes downcast. 

When did he get so damn cute. 

“Have you?” he mumbles. 

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Han replies. 

He edges closer to Luke, forcing him to face him head-on. “Look, kid, I–” Dammit, there’s no word in any language he knows. 

“Well?” Luke says. 

“What?” And when he looks back, Luke is wearing his funny smile again, the one that had so captivated Han in the first place. 

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

**Author's Note:**

> So, I like the idea of, instead of Han seeing Luke as immature or anything, being sort of transfixed by him, because they're very different but have some core similarities. Also that Luke isn't entirely timid or awkward. It's not a ship I would usually have explored but I'm really glad I did!
> 
> Also, it's worth mentioning that the working title for this fic was "Han Solo having gay thoughts". 
> 
> Happy birthday, and thank you to my awesome beta Phoenix!!!


End file.
